Ouroboros Spine hard time forgetting, even harder forgiving

Sinaaq wasn't very sure of what had happened to Cara, and frankly the Arrluk couldn't be bothered to care. Perhaps she had been challenged by the loner and lost, or perhaps she'd decided she'd had enough and abandoned the pack. The latter struck Sinaaq as unlikely given how how affronted she'd been at his subtle challenges of her authority, encouraging him to be more social. Had she been any better, the darkling couldn't help but think with a twisted scowl on his lips. The Spine would be better off without her, the little girl playing Queen. Her leadership skills had came across as poor to the obsidian Arrluk. He had high standards, after all. The thought occurred to him, briefly, after the noted absence of Cara continued for longer than it should have, of stepping up — but Sinaaq did not dream of power. He'd never felt the lust to lead, though he very much valued his own dominance. He was wretched and thus he had no place trying to be a patriarch of anything. The fallen was no King, and this he was contended with.

The new leader had seemed to have appeared out of no where, though for all the attention Sinaaq had previously paid to the Spine, she could have been apart of the pack all along. In truth, it made no difference to the darkling. He only cared if she could lead and lead well. If she could inspire him — something that Cara had no intentions of doing, seeming to think that it was not the leader's job to inspire their underlings — and make him want to follow her, if she could prove herself worthy of it then she would have his loyalty. Sinaaq was comfortable in the Spine and was in no mood to disrupt such comforts. For a long time he had traveled, seeking a home for Adlartok at first, a brief bought of love that left him worse than before, and then finally here to the Teekon Wilds not once but twice. He was tired of wandering. 

Sinaaq was solitary by choice, elusive and enigmatic out of fear self defense. It was the only way he knew how to protect himself from suffering more heartache. If he loved no one and no one loved (or liked, even) him then he would not grow attached and thus he would feel nothing when they left. Actively, Sinaaq sought the new Spine Queen. The meeting had been one thing, but in order to assess what kind of leader she truly was that required something much more personal and one-on-one. He found her in the process of marking the borders, attempting to drown out Cara's fading scent with her own. “So you are the new Queen of the Spine,” Sinaaq greeted her, accented voice lilting softly as he slowed his approach, eyes of liquid gold fixated upon her with subtle curiousity.